Catholic Church in England and Wales

The Catholic Church in England is the affiliate of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, founded by Augustine of Canterbury in 597. In the 2nd century, during the Roman Empire's rule over Britannia, Christianity spread to the British Isles, leading to the martyrdom of Saint Alban and a number of other early converts. Following the 313 AD Edict of Milan and the 380 Edict of Thessalonica, Christianity became the established faith of Rome, with the Catholic Church becoming the state church of the Western Roman Empire. The Celtic churches had differing doctrines from the Roman church, with the Celtic churches being less restrictive about clerical celibacy and having different ways of tonsuring priests and calculating the date of Easter. In 597, Pope Gregory I sent Augustine and 40 other Catholic missionaries to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, and Catholicism became the dominant faith in the isles. In 1534, however, King Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome by declaring himself supreme head of the English church, and, while he did not accept Protestant innovations in doctrine or liturgy, he extended toleration to English Protestants in exhcange for their support for his break from Rome. Failure to accept the break was regarded as treason, leading to Henry's executions of Thomas More and John Fisher. In 1536, the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising broke out in Yorkshire, and it was suppressed with military force. From 1536 to 1541, in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the 900 religious houses in England were confiscated from the Church. Under King Edward VI of England, the Church of England replaced the Latin Mass with the Book of Common Prayer, and it gradually became more Protestant. From 1553 to 1558, under Queen Mary of England, Catholicism was reinstated as the state religion, and several Protestants were burned at the stake as heretics. When Mary died in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth I of England became Queen, and Elizabeth immediately outlawed loyalty to a foreign ruler, including the Pope. The Rising of the North, the Throckmorton plot, the Babington plot, the Anglo-Spanish War, and the Gunpowder Plot led to widespread anti-Catholicism, and the Church was outlawed until King Charles I of England, influenced by his French wife, tolerated the faith, as did his sons, Kings Charles II and James II. In the 1688 Glorious Revolution, the Protestant prince William of Orange overthrew the Stuart dynasty, re-establishing Anglicanism as the state religion. Catholicism was outlawed until 1829, giving Catholics equal civil rights as Protestants. During the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, thousands of Catholic Irish emigrated to Scotland and England, increasing the Church's membership. By 2009, 9.6% of England and Wales' populations were Catholic.